


The Art of Miracle

by deskclutter



Category: Discworld - Pratchett
Genre: Angels, Clacks, Community: 31_days, Gen, Kidfic, Multi, Shenanigans, The Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May, lilac day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-25
Updated: 2010-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"ALL THE LITTLE ANGELS RISE UP COMMA RISE UP," he read aloud. "ALL THE LITTLE ANGELS RISE UP HIGH EXCLAMATION MARK HOW DO THEY RISE UP..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Miracle

**Author's Note:**

> May be timeline-squiffy? Er. This fic is set between Going Postal and Making Money. I do not know if May falls between that time. It may not. I have not picked up my Discworld books recently enough to be entirely sure that everything is canonical. Or that anything is. I hope you enjoy it regardless!

**Title:** The Art of Miracle  
**Day/Theme:** May 25th / May dangers create of us heroes  
**Series:** Discworld  
**Character/Pairing:** Sam Vimes, Sam Vimes Jr., Sybil Ramkin Vimes, Moist von Lipwig, Havelock Vetinari  
**Rating:** G  
__

_A brisk wind licks through the city-state of Ankh Morpork, leaving sticky fingers down nostrils and a dry, rattling cough in its wake.  
_

_He is above the common cold. Quite literally, in fact, as he stands atop Old Tom like a rather less craggy version of a gargoyle. Brooding. Alone. In the dark. Desperately hoping that no stray glimmer from his golden suit will give him away..._

  
"Coo!" said Sam Vimes, clapping his hands against the bedsheet. "Coo book! Coo book!"

His parents groaned beneath the sudden weight of toddler. "No, Sam," his mother said, attempting sleepily to shove him off her stomach. "Cows are asleep, as _you_ ought to be. You're not about to find them now."

"COOS," said Sam. A rogue swan, imbued with a certain amount of magical residue that had leaked off Unseen University, had terrorised the city some months back, and Constable Wee Mad Arthur had been told to call in his unruly country cousins, having assured Vimes they were well-versed in dealing with spiteful birds, even if spiteful birds were thrice their size rather than twice. "There's more tae hit," apparently. Wee Mad Arthur had not seen fit to assure Vimes that they would single-handedly incite riots for nearly-draining the city of alcohol, win all subsequent brawls, and wreak havoc on his son's pre-nascent Assassin's Guild accent. But the swan was at least gone.

"Don't you think, dear, that Sam's first words ought to have been something other than 'cow book'?" Sybil was muttering mildly into her pillow.

"Better 'cows' than, er, other phrases that spring to mind. Pictsies are a notoriously foul-mouthed lot. So are humans, come to think of it..." Vimes opened bleary eyes to Sam's drooling visage. "Blast it all, Sam -- sorry dear -- cows are for five o'clock in the afternoon, not five before the sun comes up!"

"WHERE'S MAH COO?" Sam demanded.

Honed by a bloody long time in the service of the great city of Ankh Morpork, Vimes rolled out of bed and tackled his son in one swift move, clapping a hand over his mouth. Incongruously, the boy giggled and said, "MMPH" into Vimes' palm. Vimes looked at his wife, and they exchanged telepathic signals over their son's head.

"Oh, go on then," said Sybil. "It _is_ his birthday, after all."

"So it is," Vimes sighed. He dropped Sam back on the bed, who scrambled to sit up.

"Coo?" he asked.

"No," said Vimes. "Coos -- blast it -- _cows_ are for later. Dad's got other stories besides _cows_. F'r instance, young Sam, let me tell you about angels..."

  
_There are a number of observations Albert Spangler had never had the time to put to any use before his untimely sort of death. A great number of them involved Ankh Morpork and her denizens. Albert Spangler had been a great observer of people. On a synaptic pulse in his teeming mind had been etched the inane little detail about Biers regulars. Regulars at Biers tavern held pokers as objects of fear and a strange reverence for a reason he has -- had, that is -- yet to ascertain. (There will no longer be any ascertaining. Spangler is a very dead man, except for that one instance where he was called from the dead to provide miracular assistance, and his reincarnation holds an upright and respectable position in civil service. Respectable civil workers do not frequent Biers in any capacity, not even if Biers' unusual clientele might remind one somewhat of homesickness and besides, the so-called 'Splotch' they serve there -- eeulgh.)  
_

_Albert Spangler could not have said when the information would have been useful, only that it might one day prove to save his life, which it had not. It might save his successor's life, perhaps, which is why such information had not been summarily tipped out into the Ankh once Mr. Lipwig had accepted his post in mind as well as body (and bodily well-being).  
_

_So it boiled down to this: on a very specific day, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler voluntarily put himself in the vicinity of a a fresh lilac. CMOT Dibbler apparently did not put himself in the way of anything fresh if he could help it. It was probably the only time he did so all year, in fact._

  
Once upon a time, young Sam, there lived a mad Patrician. He was as mad as a troll with ten licks of Slab on his tongue, but _he_ could form coherent sentences on top of it. Of course, his brain was absolute mush, but no one could say a thing because his mouth could pretend to be sane enough to get away with murder.

He did get away with murder. He got away with employing monsters and he got away with believing in horses too. He believed in horses so much that he made one of them a very important advisor. That sort of madman is not the sort of madman you want for a Patrician. He is not even the sort of madman you want to see enough alive to mutter, 'millenium hand and shrimp'.

Our mad Patrician was so busy believing in horses that he didn't believe in angels. But not believing in angels does not ensure that angels don't believe in you. More importantly, not believing in angels doesn't mean that others don't believe in angels either.

  
_And then there was Constable Reginald Shoe, quite as alive as Dibbler's wares, who similarly sported a lilac.  
_

_According to gravedigger gossip, he sank beneath the earth into his coffin with the lilac still pinned to his breast and in the morning, it was still quite as fresh as a daisy. One doesn't see Constable Shoe wear the lilac after that one specific day, but rumour said that a veritable sheet of undead lilacs covered the bed of his grave..._

  
The mad Patrician hadn't always been mad. Once upon a longer time ago, he might even, perhaps, have been sane. Certainly, he had been clever. You find clever people with rocks, young Sam. Throw one out anywhere in to the city and you will hit one of them on the head. Chrysoprase is clever enough to be human. Mr. Dibbler is clever enough not to have literally cut his own throat. The snatch-thief without a license is clever enough not to have been caught by the Guild _yet_.

And clever people -- once they have caught their fingers between the door and the doorpost and broken them, once the Thieves' Guild hulks are about to come down on them like a sack of Guild Cant books -- can only wish for miracles when their cleverness runs out. And it appears that angels are most gifted at _dispensing_ miracles, so it is a tricky one if you don't believe in angels.

  
_He had even heard say that Corporal Nobbs, who was by all accounts a filthy, mangy creature -- the closest thing to undead a person could get without being undead, though Mr. Lipwig was beginning to have second thoughts about why exactly Corporal Nobbs smoked strong-scented cigarettes and tucked the foul-smelling ends behind his ear -- was seen wearing a lilac.  
_

_Competent old Sergeant Colon, Mr. Lipwig's favourite police officer even before Mr. Spangler had died, had been loitering around a corner on the day before the celebration of certain undead members of the Ankh Morpork public to put off unauthorised thieves -- who would see that an honest Tommy could and, indeed, would turn an unlucky fellow in to the unforgiving chaps who manned the Thieves' Guild -- had absentmindedly begun to hum a song. It was a peculiar little ditty that had pried itself somehow into Albert Spangler's synaptic responses and refused to climb out.  
_

_On the day of the lilac, Sergeant Colon had been wearing the lilac too, though Mr. Spangler had not verified this himself, for Corporal Nobbs had been at his side, and it wouldn't do -- have done -- at all to let his scent roam unchecked in such dreadful company._

  
Our Patrician was clever, but he was not _smart_. He was a believer, but not in angels. What was he to do, then, when a whole army of angels stood up and sang, right on the steps of the Treacle Mine Road station? That was a right miracle, young Sam, when angels got up off the wreckage of the city's peace to put it all back together again.  
They weren't real angels, of course. They were tired, scummy men, who had been fighting the scumminess for a long time. But if they had been angels, they couldn't have done what they did, because everyone only gets one angel, and each angel can only dispense one miracle per halo, and then they spend the rest of your life leaning their nosy faces over your shoulder to wait for you to slip up...

There wouldn't have been a peace in the city, there wouldn't have been a new Patrician, there wouldn't have been a chance that your old dad could survive, young Sam, if you believe in the traditional sort of angel.

Not that the Patrician believed in angels. His only miracle was the gift of his title. He wasn't clever enough to keep it, nor _smart_ enough to engage in the fine Ankh Morpork tradition of bargaining for his position, nor was he smart enough to _make_ himself Patrician.

The only renewable angel, the only sort of angel who will keep on yielding miracles when you punch it, is the angel you make of yourself. In your dad's Watch, we call those angels Men.

  
_Or there is another thing that ties these men together, not the undead factor.  
_

_...  
_

_...Here he is, on the eve of a very special day -- or very early in the morning, to be precise -- on the rooftops of Unseen University, where a secret clacks tower lies waiting..._

  
"Ah, Commander Vimes," said the Patrician. "To what do we owe this unexpected visit?"

"What the hell is _this_?" demanded Vimes in a very quiet manner, brandishing a sheet of paper as though it were a piece of the Ankh itself, ready to burst into flames at any moment. He bulged with more than mere indignation. Even the lilac sprig on his breastplate quivered with ferociously suppressed emotion.

"I assure you, Commander, that I have no idea whatsoever," Vetinari replied. "Gentlemen, if you please? A pressing issue appears to have arisen. Drumknott shall, of course, contact your offices for a rescheduling of this highly delicate meeting."

The bankers filed out, each shooting Vimes a wary glance.

"It came through the clacks at Pseudopolis Yard," said Vimes, very calmly. "The _clacks_. Where dead clacksmen shuttle their names from end to end of the Line, keeping their souls alive in the Overhead..."

"I am familiar with the concept, Sir Samuel," said Lord Vetinari. "If I may?"

Vimes handed him the paper mutely.

Vetinari perused the form. "ALL THE LITTLE ANGELS RISE UP COMMA RISE UP," he read aloud. "ALL THE LITTLE ANGELS RISE UP HIGH EXCLAMATION MARK HOW DO THEY RISE UP..."

"Etcetera etcetera," said Vimes, whose voice appeared to have crusted over in heavy irony.

"I see," said Lord Vetinari. He folded the piece of paper away. "This shall be taken care of."

Something in the frame of Commander Vimes' shoulders collapsed. "Just like that?"

"While the romance inherent in the clacks tradition is no doubt appealing, it would also appear to be redundant in this particular case," said Vetinari, pointedly making no gesture towards the flower pinned to his chest. "Yes, Commander Vimes, just like that. We agreed there would be no memorials."

"Well ... good!" Vimes said, his customary belligerence resurfacing.

"Do wish your son a happy birthday for me," said Vetinari. The doors slammed shut behind the Duke of Ankh Morpork.

Into the silence, Vetinari spoke. "Drumknott."

"Sir."

"Compile a folder on the matter of the Mint and the Bank. I begin to suspect it will very shortly be necessary, as long as Miss Adora Belle Dearheart remains without the walls of Ankh Morpork. I would also like to review the dossier on the Postmaster General."

"Not Albert Spangler, sir?" asked the ever-efficient clerk.

"That man is dead, Drumknott," said Lord Vetinari. "No, I shall not be needing his file."

  
"Tha' is no' mah coo," said young Sam Vimes with deep-seated assurance.

Sybil laughed.


End file.
